


words like daggers

by amethystsarah



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-20
Updated: 2012-08-20
Packaged: 2017-11-12 13:23:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/491523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amethystsarah/pseuds/amethystsarah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three things the Doctor didn't say to Amy Pond and one thing he did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	words like daggers

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at my [livejournal](http://solstice-lj.livejournal.com/) a while ago, but since getting this AO3 account (which is new, blame the long queue) I figured it would be good to crosspost my Eleven/Amy fics. So if you've run into this fic over on LJ, that's why.

_1_

He takes her to a market on the planet Trewoull. (The name of which Amy actually can’t pronounce. He says it slowly, drawing it out on his tongue, grinning mischievously until she hits him.) There are tents set up all over a wheat field, the fabric crimson and billowing in the wind. The wheat is knee-high, thick and golden, though the vendors studiously ignore it as they set out their wares. It takes effort to wade through, and the stalks prick uncomfortably through his trousers.

Amy walks in front of him, eyes childishly wide at everything she sees. She trails her fingers over everything, vases and ribbons and strange artifacts. He feels delight curling in his stomach at her expression, when she whispers,  _am I dreaming?_ he smiles to himself.

They come across a vendor selling fruit from every end of the galaxy—none of it looks edible to her, though the Doctor can name almost everything. In the end he buys two blah-blah-blahs (she tunes out the name) and when he turns to her with a mysterious look and says simply, “It tastes different to everyone,” well, how can she resist?

She takes a bite, and her first thought is that it tastes rather like an apple, crisp, like autumn. Then she chews and cinnamon burns her throat, spicy and so,  _so_ sharp, and honey slides sweetly into her other senses and she  _gasps,_ and she can’t breathe and— _Doctor!_

His hands tangle in her red hair, and he sighs almost inaudibly, tilting her head up so he meets her eye to eye. He doesn’t speak, only looks at her, lingering, and rests his forehead against hers. She swallows and all at once, the taste is gone, leaving her reeling. It takes a moment, but she pulls way. “That was…”

He wants to ask what she tasted but refrains himself, nodding a bit. She grins at him then. “Well, I waited long enough for you, didn’t I? Come on!” Lacing her fingers in his, she pulls him along.

The Doctor is silently, perfectly, content in Amy Pond’s wake.

_2_

It’s a calm, do-nothing sort of day in the TARDIS. They’re in the library, on the worn, green sofa. Amy’s on one end of the couch, stretching her legs to the other end, and the Doctor’s on the opposite end, stretching his legs as well. There are a few snacks scattered on the floor next to the couch—they went to an intergalactic supermarket last week—and a cup of hot green tea (Amy’s, of course).

The Doctor’s reading some sort of alien magazine (“So… is that like an alien version of US Weekly, Doctor?”) and Amy has an old classic that she’s determined to start. He looks up from his magazine, content, and her eyes flicker up to meet his over to the top of her book. He grins, but she looks back down at her book. He frowns, a bit put out, when her foot nudges his side. He looks up again.  

She looks at him over the rim of her book, eyes playful. Her nose wrinkles slightly, so he thinks she might be smiling, but she’s hiding her smile behind her book. He pretends to read, waiting—ah! There it is! She nudges him with her foot a second time. A moment later, it happens again.

He nonchalantly reaches as if he’s about to grab a snack from the floor, and then, very deliberately, pokes her side, immediately leaning back to his original position and assuming an air of innocence. There’s a small moment where neither of them move, silently gauging each other. Then chaos erupts.

She jumps on him in retaliation, wiggling her fingers in threat of tickling and he pokes her sides unrelentingly. She yelps and he laughs and then the tables turn and for a moment he scrambles away in mock fear. There is  _no_ personal space (the TARDIS wants to roll her eyes in fond affection) and laughter and tugging of bowties and hands in hair ( _honestly_ , they’re like  _toddlers,_ she thinks).

When they’re done, they lay side by side, heads hanging off the sofa, Amy’s crimson hair brushing the floor. The Doctor looks sideways at her, resting his cheek on the cushion and smiling into the fabric, and she turns her head to grin at him. He feels simply content. There’s warmth spreading through him, and he thinks it must have started in his chest. Looking at her, magnificent Amy Pond, he wants to say something.

_You’re my best friend. You’re…_

It doesn’t seem like words are enough to give her, in return for this  _feeling_ that she’s given him. So he says nothing.

_3_

The next time he sees her, she’s dead. Rory, plastic, Roman Rory, still so human on the inside, is beside to her.  Everything fades away, even the valiant boy next to her, until the only thing he sees is her. It’s funny, in a morbid, gruesome sense, that even in death she’s so vibrant.

Her hair is splayed out around her head, the strands copper in the fading light. He can almost imagine it’s fire, pooling around her head. Her tear tracks still haven’t dried, salty and shimmering on her cheeks. It cannot be possible for her to be dead and look so  _alive_. Then again, Amy Pond has always been impossible, even before he crashed into her garden in Leadworth. In all the timelines, in all the alternate universes, Amy Pond is magnificent and impossible—and alive.

This was not the ending meant for her.

There’s a bang, and some shenanigans, and a fez—!  That’s how it comes to be that he locks Amy Pond in the Pandorica. He has clever ideas, oh, the Doctor does. This one—this  _has_  to work, for he cannot imagine a world without her, not after all of their adventures.

He makes himself drag her inside the prison, her body limp and uncooperative, makes himself lock the clamps over her wrists and shoulders. He stands in front of her, the light from the Pandorica bathing her in a dark blue color, almost as if she’s underwater. Her chin drops, her head falling back on the headrest, shadows falling over the curves of her cheeks, and he thinks absentmindedly that she’s rather beautiful.

He doesn’t say  _I’m sorry_. He doesn’t say  _I led you to this._ He doesn’t say  _I’m asking you to wait 2,000 years for me._

He just presses his lips to her forehead and wonders if this was a fairytale, whether his kiss would save her or not.

_4_

He is a masochist, and vain, and selfish—so disgustingly,  _humanly_  selfish. But, for once, he has to do this. No running away. (He has run away from the things he loves and fears equally in his lifetime, and she is a magnificent mix of both everything he loves and everything he fears.)

She’s a bright young thing, his Amelia Pond. She  _was_. And the one thing he’s never denied himself is her faith.

So, kneeling next to her on the dingy hotel carpet, he takes all of the words he’s never said, the ones he locks away when his guilt eats at him, and spits them out. The words are like molasses on his tongue, and he wants nothing more to swallow and have them slide down his throat unsaid _._ He rambles on, forcing the words out, slowly breaking her, until the last sentence has passed through his lips.  _“Amy Williams, it’s time to stop waiting.”_

He looks at her then, long and lingering, unable to stop. She’s never been more glorious than she is without him, all vibrant red hair and pale skin and everything he wants to have but never will allow himself. Her eyes shimmer with all the tears she won’t cry for him and he’ll never be able to forget what she looks like in this moment, faithless and so undeniably strong.

 He wonders at this new Amy Pond, this impossible, beautiful creature who doesn’t need him. Well, Amy Pond has never needed him, but at least she  _wanted_ him. But, if anything, he is good at pretending. So later that night, he will pretend that there is no sharp ache in his throat, no empty feeling in his stomach, nothing.

He will pretend there is no magnificent Amy Pond and no Doctor and he is just a man traveling throughout the universe. But the world is infinitely more lonely without her and he will take Amy Pond in whatever shape he can have her. 


End file.
